Faith in "The Cult" Wavering

After the first episode of TV2's "The Cult", it's fair to say I was not hanging out for the second. So I quickly ceded Thursday night viewing rights to the Las Vegas season of "Top Chef". Which, was digestible. Just waiting for the development of "Smell-o-Vision" or "Taste-tv" for these reality cooking shows to really take off.

So The Cult was "taped" (yes, I still say that), and I saw it yesterday. I never watched "Lost" - I don't like the petrie dish approach to setting - and this "group of strangers vs cultists in the wild" story seems to be just as alienating. The introduction of flashbacks to develop character is no substitute for interaction that is meaningful in a context we the viewers can instinctively understand. There is no clear reason for the leadership of "Michael" among the Rescuers. The "cultists" are portrayed as independent and intelligent to help us connect to them - but that conflicts directly with the situation they've got themselves into. In fact, the whole show revolves around the facile acceptance of a string of events and plot points that do very little to involve the viewer at all.

I googled for some "reviews" of the Cult and found the pre-show hype and self-promotion:
Herald; Stuff; Throng. All very typical stuff for a show where the money's been blown, mistakes made and they're desperate to get whatever return they can eke out.

The Listener hit the first ep where it hurt - on the contrived, desperate plot.

Most interesting is the writer's blog of Peter Cox, because it explains what they were aiming for - what would have made the show work.

"If we're going to invest any time with the members of the Cult, they can't be idiots, brainwashed zombies or acting too illogically. Like most cult members, Ryan is a smart guy, so Edward has to be strong and convincing: not just to the characters, but also the audience. Ultimately, you want people to wonder: hell, maybe Edward is actually right all along... "

Dude - you called the show The Cult. You started with some fancy "Two Gardens" eye-surgery, threats and locked gates, then bodies; the cultists can't leave at all, don't seem free and are a little afraid of their leader, and there are chases right from the start. You load up baggage against the Cult, and against that you place only the charisma of its leader, Edward. If the viewer's supposed to have some "faith" in the cult, that's a huge ask. Actually, a tragic mistake.

Far more dangerous is the open-doored cult. The reasonable cult. Where nothing appears to be wrong. Families walk in, see their loved ones, then bang their heads against the wall trying to get them to see the truth - then have to walk away, doubting their own conviction. That would sow huge divisions in the "Liberators". This would reinforce the message that the "outside world is dangerous", however they label the cult. We can then sedately follow Ryan's experience in the Cult, wondering if/when something might go wrong...

Instead, there are no great mysteries to inveigle our interest, because it has been signalled too clearly that the cult is "bad", or at least "bad enough". There's no journey to follow; just a collection of answers. Mystery "bounty hunter"? Meh. Girl with strange eye in a bath-tub? Bleh. The show relies on the viewer's fascination with the tropes of the sci-fi genre, but they don't even execute them well, and there's nothing for anyone not into sci-fi to hang on to. It is too cut up with oddities, poor music, poor editing, boring lighting, muddled themes, and 70s direction that even "Lost" fans would be lost, pushed back to the role of numb observer, all curiosity diluted to the fascination of watching a car tipping on a cliff edge.

We know it's a car. We know it's going to fall. That is all.

When Character Counted

I recently finished watching the entire series of Blakes 7 on DVD. I'm not going to link it, this is the internet, you can google it just as easily.

It is British, "science fiction", and ran for four years from the late 70s. The show's creator, Terry Nation (Of "Doctor Who's "Daleks" fame) described the show as "Dirty Dozen in Space". It suffers from the lack of budget and technology we expect these days, but for character and dialogue and story, it surpasses anything that has been seen in the genre since. And in saying this I respectfully include Joss Whedon's Firefly & Serenity, which are the best of the rest. Occasionally those shows still smelt of the corn-cheese factory, but were loveable nonetheless.

But too loveable. You could see from the writing of Firefly's pilot that Captain Malcolm Reynolds was supposed to be a tough as nails SOB who cared only for himself, his ship, and his crew - and often his dialogue reflected that. But his actions were of the eponymous hero - like Roj Blake from Blakes 7. They would only hurt the deserving, eve though their actions caused many undeserving might get caught in the crossfire.

Unlike Mal, though, Blake had a calculating and rational offsider Ker Avon, who would cut to the chase. If innocents died anyway, any bother or moral torment over how they died was pointless and costly - the thing that mattered was winning. Time after time Avon sacrificed innocents for his greater good - for which Blake always provided a hazy moral compass... right till the end.

Paul Darrow, who played Avon, gives an excellent interview on the final disk of Season 4, where the show was culled. He says of a Blakes 7 revival, "Serenity - it has already been done." But he is too modest. In a time where so much TV wastes production values on banal scripts filled with exposition and bland scenes written as radio with pictures, not even the limitations of 70s sci-fi can depose Blakes as a pinnacle in television drama.

Other great TV dramas:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Mad Men
The Sopranos
The Insiders Guide to Happiness (& Love) (NZ)
Secret Life of Us (AUS)
Outrageous Fortune (NZ)